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Thursday, 31 May 2012

Gamebook: Warlocks Bounty...Decide Your Path.

Are you new to the gamebook genre or curious as to what it might be? Walocks Bounty for Android may be the game to help you with that.Experience a story of the magics and knights and goblins era. You are a powerful wizard and dire situations call for your help. Meet Mythical creatures, some helpful, others not. Summon your own creatures. Find clues and items. Sorry, my writing style is nothing compared to the writing in the gamebook. It certainly has the language and terms of the feudal days mastered. This along with creatively enticing storytelling takes you on your journey. The NEW android app is available on Google play with a full version and a FREE lite version. Betrayals and twists may or may not occur. Your decisions in the game decide which path your adventure takes, who and what you meet, what you find and more...

Page background and fonts are in Old English as they should be

A big advantage to reading versus seeing the world of a game or story, is that your imagination is allowed to let you see the world as it's suppose to be according to you(with some input of the author(s))...and not the way someone else wants you to see it by attempting to render it in 3D or 2D. Your imagination can be so much more real. Your mind reads and understand that there's a dragon, so you see and know a dragon is there. Just adding the word "mythical" instructs your mind to change and make your imaginary world more mythical, very hard to do with graphics in my opinion. It's difficult to disagree with yourself, as that is the natural way you interpret and translate the world from words.

This isn't to say that the mood and tones of scenes isn't aided by music and sounds. Some scenes have music that is really appropriate. From eerie to dramatic. The artwork is decent in a very acceptable way.

Battles are more involving then the white backgrounds in the cards suggest

The battle system is not that hard to get the grasp of.Cards are well designed and the items proportions seem correct. Descriptions of effects of items are clear and easy to view during battle. The Battles are fun but a bit too random. Some skills and
tactics are involved in deciding to use magic or physical. Which type of
defense to use, and whether or not to drain mana from the opponent. If you have to press the Home button to do somethine else, you might be able to come back into battle. I haven't fully tested if the game saves in a hidden file on exit, or if I just haven't cleared the temporary information yet by using more RAM.

Suggestions

I don't feel like I've gotten that much stronger at the end of the game. The characters stats has only change a few points going into the final battle. Of course, maybe I started out strong already, but I was hoping to get at least twice as strongby the end.This may be due to the story engulfing me like RPG games so that I have that expectation of becoming over 10x stronger. Maybe new installments or future related games could have this feature. Although that would involve more balancing of levels and stats and cards, meaning more time and designing.

There also isn't very much tactics involved. Battles seem to be mostly determined by luck. Persistence may be required because the tides may turn as both you and your opponents cards change. Even as you get better, some battles are just hopeless until one of your retries randomly gives you the better cards(way better). I feel I should have more control of the battles with my skills and strategies. I've had card game experience with Yugioh nonprofessionally and
the Pokemon Trading Card Game on Gameboy, not that I expect games to be
that in depth. Long ago I sort of made a Pokemon Gamebook, except the
story was in my head while a map with the routes had locations with
monsters listed.

Loading buttons from one scene to the next takes longer than expected considering each scene is a set of text(image) with a few buttons. However, all these investments would have to be considered with the application's pricing of course. The developer Emil Bakalinovof Attic Squad Gameshas in the description on Google Play "Book 1 Revenge of the Sorcerer By Jonathan Green" might be hinting of other books?

Written by Jonathan Green – a veteran of the gamebook genre having
penned numerous titles for many popular franchises, including Fighting
Fantasy, Doctor Who, Star Wars and Tin Man Games’ Gamebook Adventures -Taken from Google Play

The replay value may be a little low, but that isn't to say that the first time was not fun, because it was fun. There is a feature that describes what you may had missed in your journey compared to a fully completed one. MY SUGGESTION FOR THE READER IS TO TRY THE LITE VERSION AND SEE WHAT I MEAN. (although that would make the full versions start a little less appealing, you can rush through those scenes rather quickly). For less than $3 the full version isn't an arm and a leg and seems reasonable. It's a really interesting game.